The Use of Information Management/Information Technology in the War Against Bioterrorism

Twenty-five thousand fans crowd a park in New York City to hear a popular rock group give an outdoor summer concert. In all the noise and fun nobody notices two men driving a pickup truck bearing official city markings around the periphery of the park. Mounted on the back of the truck, a fog machine sprays a steady stream of thin vapor into the air. The people in the park have just been exposed to anthrax. The above theoretical scenario has become a frightening possibility. To be able to deal successfully with a covert bioterrorist attack, the medical system must be able to intervene as early as possible. That means they must detect an event that has been designed to be difficult to detect. The key to this detection is syndromic surveillance, the collection and analysis of patient symptom data. Used properly, syndromic surveillance can detect anomalies in the occurrence of key symptoms. Because of its artificial method of spread, a bioterror disease will produce these anomalies. Syndromic surveillance can form the core of a county-wide public health information system. Such a system links hospitals, private physicians, and other health care providers with public health officials, both locally and at the state and federal level. It can aid public health officials in detecting and successfully reacting to a bioterrorist attack. Such a system has the added benefit of aiding the health care system in detecting and successfully reacting to naturallyoccurring disease outbreaks.